The Hindu : Impasse over quota for poor students continues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 02, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Impasse over quota for poor students continues

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI, APRIL 1. Despite the best intentions of the Delhi Government to get public schools in the Capital to allocate 25 per cent seats to the poor, the move is unlikely to take off. Since a number of problems have cropped up, such a provision can only be made after an amendment is carried out to the Delhi Education Act, something that would require the consent of the Central Government.

The Directorate of Education, while scrutinising the list of public schools, has also come across a startling fact. Contrary to the general impression, only 250-odd schools out of a total of more than 1,000 public schools have been allocated land by the Delhi Development Authority. This does not make it obligatory for the 750-odd public schools to adhere to the norm of providing quota for the poor students because no such provision exists in their land lease deed. In fact, in the 250-odd schools also, there is no provision for providing 25 per cent quota and in fact the quota ranges from something between 5 to 20 per cent. There is no rule or provision in the Delhi Education Act that could penalise these schools for not adhering to the provisions of the Act in this regard.

The Delhi Education Minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely, has been holding negotiations with the managements of the various public schools in order to get a provision implemented from the present academic session. However, his efforts are unlikely to bear fruit as he is handicapped by lack of such a rule in the Delhi Education Act. In fact, the Education Minister, during the recent Assembly session, had rightly pointed out that it was the failure of the BJP Government during 1993-98 period to get the Act amended that had resulted in such a situation. He also confessed that efforts of the Congress Government to get the Act amended had met with little success in view of the indifferent attitude of the Central Government.

Officials in the Delhi Government also confessed that the failure to amend the Act had made things difficult for the Directorate of Education. The Delhi Government would have to frame new rules in this regard and the same would have to be passed by the Cabinet before being sent to the Central Government for final approval. Keeping in mind the past record of approvals from the Centre, this move might take several months making it virtually impossible to enforce this rule in the 750-odd schools. Under the present circumstances, the Delhi Government can at the best enforce such a rule in those schools that have been allocated land by the DDA.

In such cases also, it would be difficult to enforce a 25 per cent quota as the schools would rather stick to the provisions of lease deed rather than the Government norm. On the other hand, Mr. Lovely has been making an effort to persuade the schools to give admission to poor students. The confederation of schools had proposed to the Education Minister that they were ready to provide 5 per cent quota for poor students, something that has been already rejected.

However, behind the scene efforts are already on to reach some sort of understanding and arrive at a consensus on such a quota. Officials said the advent of the Lok Sabha polls had also made it difficult for the Government to announce any such decision, as it would amount to violation of the model code of conduct and any such thing would have to wait till the conclusion of the polls.

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